This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive. We are very proud to exhibit this segment of our interview with Richard Stallman, the man who first articulated the power of sharing free software.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article are permitted worldwide without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved. Excerpts consisting of any number of complete sentences may be used on the same terms.
In this segment, Richard talks about the future of free open source software. He says he is not certain about whether Free Software will prevail, or if proprietary software will choke it out, or if proprietary software will decline in importance. He says that if the Free Software movement can defeat a few of the more popular proprietary programs (everyone in the audience will know he's talking about Microaoft Windows and Microsoft Office), then it might be that proprietary software will lose its current position of dominance. He is not sure if proprietary software will cease to exist at all.
He says that in the USA, there are two sets of laws which make it difficult for Free Software to win. First, there is the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA, which prohibits anyone from creating techniques for defeating copy protection). He says tha the DMCA makes it illegal to possess deCSS, which means that it is not possible to legally watch copy-protected DVDs with Free Software (actually, that's incorrect, it's possible to use deCSS for personal viewing of your own purchased DVDs).
Richard also says that software patents pose a huge threat to Free Software. He says that any sizeable software package contaings hundreds of thousands of ideas. A software patent prevents using a patented idea without paying a royalty to the software patent holder. He says that any software developer in the United States is in constant threat of being sued for violating patents simply for writing software. He says that he had heard that the Linux kernel, which in 2004 was one-quarter of one percent of the GNU/Linux operating system, is covered by 286 separate patents. He said that even if half of those patents are invalid, that still leaves 140 patents, any one of which "could destroy your program." Microsoft is being granted several software patents a week, he says, and Microsoft's internal documents were revealed to show that it intends to destroy Free Software with patents.
tape id = e-dv202_cambridge_4_stallman_08-04_003.ogg
The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt at gmail.com.
Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here
and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under segment 003. You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:
Open Library
